Christian Bale Explains The Ending Of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

We didn’t think the ending of The Dark Knight Rises was ambiguous, but since it’s a Christopher Nolan movie, some people interpret it as only Alfred’s dream *Inception BWOM*. The script made a big to-do about Lucius Fox saying the Batwing’s autopilot was broken, leaving us to momentarily believe Bruce Wayne was in the Batwing when it exploded. (Some days, you just can’t get rid of Bane’s bomb.) So when Alfred sees Bruce and Selina Kyle at a cafe in Italy, similar to the dream he described earlier in the movie, some people interpreted that as something Alfred only imagined. Now Christian Bale has cleared things up.

Entertainment Weekly asked Bale about this scene, and he didn’t hesitate to help out those confused by what was probably the least confusing thing about The Dark Knight Rises.

“[Alfred] was content with me being alive and left because that was the life he always wanted for him. I find it very interesting and with most films, I tend to say ‘It’s what the audience thinks it is.’ My personal opinion? No, it was not a dream. That was for real and he was just delighted that finally he had freed himself from the privilege, but ultimately the burden, of being Bruce Wayne.” [transcribed by /film]

We’re inclined to agree. Why would there be a trilogy with one of the the most realistic mainstream depictions of a superhero, only to cap off the whole thing with a dream sequence presented as reality? Unless… oh my God. What if Bruce Wayne never became Batman and it was a dream he was having during a meeting the whole time? *BWOM*

Warner

Sidenote: If anybody wants to complain about the lack of a spoiler warning in a post with “explains the ending” in the headline, kindly go live in a sewer for six months and emerge no less pale, skinny, or bearded than you were before.

I think the title could be Christian Spoiler Bale Spoiler Explains Spoiler The Spoiler Ending Spoiler Of Spoiler The Spoiler Dark Spoiler Knight Spoiler Rises Spoilers and people be like “Dude?! He rises?! SPOILERS! GAH!

To be fair, peanuts are legumes, not nuts, and not everyone with a nut allergy has a peanut allergy, and vice versa. Peanuts and tree nuts are often processed in the same factories, and so cross-contamination can and does happen, so it’s fair to warn people that a jar of peanut butter might contain nuts.

@The Amazing Dougie marmalade is preserves, but i don’t like marmalade. I much prefer my mother’s watermelon preserves (though, she passed away almost 2 decades ago, so I guess I am SOL on that).
Odd… I like jellies, and preserves, but not jams… apparently I like the extremes but not the in between.

Can he explain how he’s able to fly the batwing at least six miles out (bane states the neutron bomb has six mile blast radius) within 5 seconds (the timer reading on the actual bomb)
Even if your ignore radiation poisoning, the batwing needs to travel at 1.2 miles a second (or 4320 miles an hour) and it needs to travel that fast IMMEDIATELY.

I can accept movie mistakes, but i can NOT accept narrative mistakes. If bane simply didn’t tell us the bomb’s blast radius then I could accept it. But the movie clearly sets up its own rules and then breaks them.
This movie sucked.

This is why for a long time I thought the ending was dream sequence. Their is no possible way after hearing bane fucking say the bomb has a 6 mile blast radius, the he set the autopilot and jumped out the batwing in that amount of time. I know it’s a movie but come on

@Greed I disagree, this is not nit picky at all, the movie establishes the danger itself. And lies to itself. Even if bane was lying and the nuclear device had only a one mile radius and you assume for whatever reason the Bat (thanks baltimore dan) was on the very edge of gotham the Bat would have to travel at 720 mph and accelerate to that speed in less then a second.

Am I the only person who thought Bruce jumped out of the Bat thing when there was the explosion when he was on land – as a diversion? And he hopped in the second one and that’s the shot we see at the end is him flying away from Gotham?

By being over water, the bomb’s release of energy was absorbed as not to create as large of a blast. That’s why the bomb tests were moved underground or in water as to reduce and dissipate the shockwaves of the bomb.

A hundred percent this. It all would have been fine if they hadn’t included the one shot of Batman actually IN the Batwing with 5 seconds left. Without that shot, absolutely, it is not ambiguous, he survived.

The line about its six-mile blast radius was written on purpose, and that last shot of him physically in the Batwing was inserted on purpose. It’s a colossal fuck-up, if the ending wasn’t meant to be dream.

Why is there an argument about whether The Bat had the time to travel 6 miles out. The viewer isn’t clear how far out the bomb was when you saw 5 seconds showing on the clock. All you see are thoughtful expressions on Robin’s face and then Batman’s face and then it shows the 5 seconds. An why are you assuming it’s in real time? He could have been flying for half a f@cking hour for all we know. Maybe if after you saw the 5 sec there was another scene for a little bit where it showed the water or something. Would that have been better. Seriously, for those that are getting all ruffled over the ending, I doubt you enjoy any movie.

Why is there an argument about whether The Bat had the time to travel 6 miles out. The viewer isn’t clear how far out the bomb was when you saw 5 seconds showing on the clock. All you see are thoughtful expressions on Robin’s face and then Batman’s face and then it shows the 5 seconds. Why are you assuming it’s in real time? He could have been flying for half a f@cking hour for all we know. You don’t know how much time is passing between scenes. Maybe if it showed a quick scene of the water before it showed the 5 seconds? Would that have been better. For those that are getting ruffled over the ending, I doubt you can enjoy any movie.

What pissed me off the most was, A) that explosion should have created a tsunami that would have wiped out a chunk of Gotham anyhow, B) no frigging way Bruce survived that, autopilot or not, C) the movie makes a point as to how unstable the bomb is at that point, and when he’s flying the damn thing out of the city it hits the side of EVERY building around it, and finally, D) no fricking way Bruce Wayne is sitting in a cafe anywhere in the world without someone knowing who he is…

Sorry, I’m not through. Precious Roy, since you are obviously a NASA engineer or some type of intellectually evolved being, how far out was The Bat when it showed 5 seconds? I must have missed the scene where it showed the Batdometer before he took off and again at the 5 sec scene. Or maybe you formulated his trajectory based on the rate he was travelling past objects factored with fuel usage + time x bull$%!$ – the position of the sun divided by the shadows on the water = you’re a f@cking moron.

If Batman flew the Bat at an upwards trajectory and ejected without the autopilot being fixed, then he would be fine. It’s not going to fall instantly. The Bat was going to explode anyways. Why would the autopilot be a factor?
Also you kind of want it to explode in the water.

Why is everyone trying to make the endings of everything be a dream now? I just heard a couple weeks ago that there is a theory that people are thinking Rick from The Walking Dead was dreaming the whole zombie apocalypse. People need to get more original with their dumb theories!

That last scene in this movie was as hokey as the entire The Saint starring Val Kilmer. Even that screen grab, for being a conclusive image to a whopper of a trilogy, looks like it was taken in Hollywood at some lunch by a douche on vacation

So if Bruce Wayne was really asleep the whole time and dreamt of being Batman……. does that explain Batmans awful voice?

P.S. Though honestly I do appreciate the voice change between Bruce and Batman in Bales movies as it makes sense to disguise your voice to protect your idenity….. but wasnt there something in canon about a voice changer in his suit? So a bit odd.

P.P.S I never got how people didnt tell Superman/Clark Kent apart. I wear glasses people! I dont turn into an awesome hunk of man and confidence when I take them off!!!!! I just ran into more crap! Stupid comic lying to me as a child…………

@Doctor Professor – Bruce Wayne living was a complete fucking copout. They spent the entire damned movie beating you over the head with the theme of Batman being bigger than Bruce Wayne, because Batman was an idea and you can’t kill an idea. Bruce Wayne then sacrificing his own life so that Batman could live on was the logical conclusion of the movie. The whole thing reeks of DC or Warner absolutely losing their shit over the idea of Bruce Wayne being dead and demanding this hokey ending. It would have been a much, much better movie had Bruce actually died.

Bruce Wayne is arguably the most famous man on the planet in that universe right? How does “Batman” dying prevent Bruce Wayne from being recognized by people? I know they say that Bruce died in the riots and what not, but it’s not like he’s even changed his appearance.

I guess going to Europe makes you undetectable. (Because no one from Gotham has ever visited Italy before right!!!!)

Why is there an argument about whether The Bat had the time to travel 6 miles out. The viewer isn’t clear how far out the bomb was when you saw 5 seconds showing on the clock. All you see are thoughtful expressions on Robin’s face and then Batman’s face and then it shows the 5 seconds. Why are you assuming it’s in real time? He could have been flying for half a f@cking hour for all we know. Is there something I’m missing here or are some of you as dumb as I think you are?

you are all dumb as fuck.. Morgan Freeman says at the end that the auto pilot was fixed.. under Bruce Waynes name.. so therefore batman used the auto pilot and jumped out of the bat to safe himself and be able to leave that life behind

Sidenote: If anybody wants to complain about the lack of a spoiler warning in a post with “explains the ending” in the headline, kindly go live in a sewer for six months and emerge no less pale, skinny, or bearded than you were before. THIS MADE THE WHOLE ARTICLE

Honestly, if “It was a dream” turned out to be the real answer, then what the hell would even be the point of the scene? Why show us that dream at that moment at all? What would it add to the resolution of the story?

I understand why a lot of people were upset about the Dark Knight Rises, I was one of them. That being said I think I was looking at it the wrong way. I wanted a giant, sprawling epic about the purpose and challenges of being a hero and dealt with weighty themes of good and evil. The first two delivered on this but the third tried and failed. But then I started think about the films on a smaller scale, where it was about Bruce’s personal journey instead of a giant epic. If you look at the Dark Knight that way then a lot of things, including the ending, start to make a lot more sense.

I think they were onto something at the end of the article…with him being asleep at the end. BUT it was not bruce waynes dream. It was patrick batemans 2nd dream, he got tired of mudering people and feeding cats to ATM’s so he started day dreaming about being a hero….

1) not a dream
2) autopilot fixed
3) he was too far for us to see if he jumped out or not before the explosion
4) being that he is a very smart person, he knew that “plan B” would be to fly the bomb out of town…so he would have to have a boat (batboat also on autopilot) waiting out there somewhere for him).
5) so he jumped out at some point to avoid being blasted and took cover in the batboat or batsub.

and Finally… why do people continue to pick the crap out of the details of movies until they have turned them into a pile of feces? Enjoy the movie for what it is. Allow yourself to be lost in the magic of it all. If you want realism, watch a documentary. You allow yourselves to put aside reality and believe in these characters existing within the movie in the first place yet, at the same time, throw a fit when their abilities or parts of the movie do not hold up against reality? if you are really that hard up about it you may as well ask why superheros aren’t saving people during real world disasters such as earthquakes, floods and tornadoes. Well? why aren’t they? because they don’t exist!

Can’t have both. Pick one. Choose to believe and enjoy it all or don’t believe and leave the genre alone.

I agree. Just because this director made a mind twisting plot in another unrelated film, doesn’t mean that he is going to have a bizarre twist at the end of every one of his creations. Especially a film that, otherwise, doesn’t indicate any hidden plots. And even if it is a trick, just enjoy the ride. It doesn’t make you less of a fan cause you couldn’t figure it out.

It’s a movie about a guy who dresses up like a bat and fights crime using his mystical ninja skills that he learned from a hallucinogenic flower and Qui-Gon Jinn. Why are we quibbling about the autopilot?

1º Bane’s plan makes no sense.
2º Marion Cotillard being the final “bad guy” is really stupid.
3º Batman breaks his back and gets thrown into the biggest hole in the world and he is somehow able not only heal himself and get out of the hole but he also gets back to Gotham in perfect shape juuuust in time to stop the bomb.
4º There is an actual scene where there is an army of cops and an army of bad guys standing in front of each other with guns, and they fucking RUN AT EACH OTHER!, THEY RUN AT EACH OTHER!, INSTEAD OF FUCKING SHOOTING!!!

And people are complaining about the ending?

Also Bruce not being dead is a copout for the reasons depicted in the comments above.